by Jack Womack
"Songs I like or songs that he useta sing?"
"What's familiar is always best appreciated."
"Not if I don't like it," E said, standing up and retrieving the guitar Dryco had provided him. He strummed the strings, breaking one; though the instrument appeared acoustic, the sound was electric. "Lemme play somethin' I'm good at. I know a song 'bout London. Give you a' idea a what I can do."
"We know what you can do, Elvis, we've heard and seen you-
"You mean you heard and seen him," E said. "Just sit there and listen. If I'm the one singin', I oughta have a say. Right, Isabel?"
I nodded; Leverett stared at me, and I shuddered as his smile returned. As E began playing his chords I realized that he played so well as he sang. Mayhap he'd listened to his counterpart's sounds long enough to realize not only what he could do, but grasped as well that he might do better. When E sang he sounded as Elvis might have, and did on the earliest records, as if he'd dropped into the studio from another world, neither ours nor his.
"Not all of the songs playlisted were done by your counterpart," Leverett interjected, seizing a pause in the airspace, "but those that weren't suit the image. Have you ever heard `Teen Angel'-?"
E fixed his look on me as he sang, playing to no other, uncaring that we weren't alone in the room. Against all expectation or reason I felt myself soften. It possibled that I'd adjusted to him as the weeks passed; could have been that the control I knew I had over him, the power which I'd never had over my husband, strengthened me enough that I sensed my own soul's urgings as they evidenced pure, and not moments later, after my mind had time enough to reinterpret their meaning. When E stared at me now, caressing his guitar strings as he might have caressed his girlfriend, I not only at last understood his figurative attraction but felt it, as well.
Our trip had drawn John and me closer together, after all. We were bearing in toward one another again so inexorably as a missile returns, in time, to earth; but in our heaven I saw no sign that we could in any way forestall such a mutually attractive destruction. As I listened to E sing I outbodied for an instant, allowing my soul to drift away for a time that it might commingle with one I hadn't known. It wasn't truly E with whom I fancied conjoining, or so I hairsplit; my dream lover only showed in his shell, surrounding a center partly my husband's, partly my own.
E smiled, concluding his song and laying aside his guitar. Leverett rolled his hands together, sliding them one over the other, as if he'd become slippier while sitting there. "It's a feelgooder, sure," he said. "We'll go with my suggests, I think. Your public knows what it wants. Trust me."
"Not all of my pieces have been displayed," said Tanya, as she escorted me into her largest. "I call this one `Wailing Wall: You've Seen Me Before.'"
After leaving E I'd had myself driven to Tanya's studio in Riverdale, having appointed to meet her and see her works closehand. Judy provided her with an old house overlooking the Hudson River and the Palisades, a mansion once occupied as all in the neighborhood had been occupied by a Home Army officer; twenty years of green paint flaked from its exterior, snowing onto the grass, showing as healthy weeds against the sunbroiled yard. Inside, we walked between double rows of quarter-meter-square metal boxes, stacked twice so high as our heads. Each box bore on its rusted face a photo of what appeared, at first, to be a sleeping baby; in many instances, even after applying close eye, it remained unimaginable that the baby shown was truly dead.
"Each box carries one lost. A reinterpretation of Boltan- ski. Are you familiar with memorial photography?"
"No," I said. Most images were funeral shots, head-on polaroids snapped precremation; others were older, including some tintypes from a century and a half before, so old that their surfaces were as one with their boxes.
"Most popular during the nineteenth century. Popular again at the end of the twentieth, when so many began dropping. A nineties specialty, the sort of thing you'd expect from that period." The two walls were spaced far enough apart that our shoulders barely brushed them as we sin- glefiled through; their lengths mazed through the house's ground floor, running over forty meters. "Memory pictures, all. Shadows of ones lost."
"So many of them appear so-"
"Normal?" she asked. "Fatal deformities rarely ambient overtly. Ten percent of these pictured, for example, died from being born lungless."
I stared at a shot of a windowed coffin constructed for two; the heads of a seeming couple were visible within, and I wondered if theirs was a physical or metaphorical juncture. "Their beauty isn't immediately seeable, even by those who believe they appreciate fetal art. This homes it a bit too close for most, I fear."
Small white lights affixed to the top of the walls cast enough glow to illuminate each photo. "You know their backgrounding histories?" I asked.
"I try. Someone should remember," she said. "The oldest images are anonymous, needless to say. But they're not forgotten, only lost. And these are mine, in the last row."
She gestured toward the boxed images of her nonviabled children; most had been recognizably recycled. I counted fourteen boxes. "Only four were fullterm. Five births were multiple. They're all still with me." Tanya switched off her piece's lights, and guided me across the room toward stairs. "How did you choose the fathers-?"
"At random," she said as we ascended. "As circumstanced; they're rather inessential once the spark is thrown. Serve as seeds of ideas, as it were. Here we are." At the head of the stairs were high double oak doors; sliding them apart, she opened her studio. "Ignore, sweetie, we're occupied." Tanya's daughter stood atop a rolled plastic tube on the room's far side, placing small bones into a screened wooden frame, sprinkling sparkling powder over them with a sifter. While glittering their lengths she periodically lifted a femur or rib or vertebra, holding them up in sunlight to better judge their shine. The house's upper floor was cathedralceilinged, open from gable to gable; the walls facing the river were glassed. The sun, setting over Jersey, ambered the room. Tanya told her coffeemaker to pour us two cups, and we sat in two wicker rockers; she crossed her legs beneath her as her cat hopped into her lap.
"You were at the Columbia show, then?" she said. "It so successed. Forgive my not remembering you."
"Of course," I said. "I'd heard of the movement, but hadn't seen your work before."
"That was our first show, aboveground," she said. "Until Ms. Glastonbury began assuring security, public exhibition involved passing through gray areas. We've had no troubles since." She nodded toward her daughter. "What a worker. How's the look, sweetie?"
Her daughter hoisted an armbone no longer than a pencil, twirling it as if it were a baton; excess glitter spilled floor-ways. "Like this?"
"That's lovely, sweetie," Tanya said. "Many of my co-workers who lack studio space leave their materials here, and we appropriately treat them as desired. We're all quite close." She smiled. "Ms. Glastonbury tells me you're pregnant." "My first month," I said. "Perfect, thus far."
"That's correctable. What procedures would you prefer to use?"
"That's not why I'm here."
"Of course. I'm sorry." Mayhap all who came to her claiming such employed that line at first, to detrepidize themselves; Tanya appeared to understand, and redirected our conversation. "My work speaks to you?"
"It shouts, but I don't know what it says."
"Keep listening."
"How did you ..." I started to ask. "Why did you? Begin, I mean."
"My husband ran fourteen years ago, when we lived in Chicago," she said. "I found out I was pregnant afterward, and had neither money nor contacts to effect abortion. The Health Service amnioed me and forecast the stillbirth. I dayshifted all the while at a plant that manufactured car batteries. You can imagine the conditions. I still spew dust each morning. One evening when I got off there was a sandstorm and the El was shut down. A woman cabbie heading into town offered me a free ride. I was in my seventh month, and showed plain. She asked if I was having any trouble. I flooded, but couldn't say w
hy. We stopped at a diner and I talked to her. Harangued, rather. Cursed the man who'd planted and flown. Cursed the government that demanded I birth the dead. Cursed the world that, through its poisons, guaranteed my baby's death so long as it was bound inside me. She said she understood. I cried again.
"Her name was Dianne. She led me into the diner's restroom. I remember hearing the rats scratching in the walls as she lifted her shirt. She'd had a caesarean; she'd tattooed a short-stem rose on her scar. She pushed her hair back from her head, and flashed her earrings. They looked like golden insects at first, but when I looked closer I saw that they were little hands. Diane told me that there were some women she thought I should meet.
"I went to see them the next week at her apartment, in an old building on North Clark Street. She'd stuffed the windows with towels to keep the sand out. There were five others besides Dianne. All'd gone to term after they'd been left pregnant, and all birthed at home. They'd insighted independently, they told me; afterward, realizing what they could do, they sought out others in whom they perceived .. ." Tanya paused; sipped her coffee while she considered her words. She gazed over toward her daughter before continuing. "You can't prettify violence and waste solely for aes- thetic's sake, something more is needed. So what we do is take the rage the violence arouses and make of its leavings something bright, and strange enough to be familiar.
"Much more than this. Mind me, dear, you'll love the baby you grow all the more, knowing it'll live only while it's in you. It could be a nine-month funeral, if you negatived. But these days so many would say the whole of life is but a wake where the beloved can finally hear what's said about them behind their backs. So ..." With callused hands she wiped her eyes; tabled her emptied cup. "So we found ourselves. None of us were art majors. Later the theoreticians deciphered what we'd folked. They semiograph us, but we won't reply. All we know is that we were damned if we birthed simply to bury. Our children deserve better than that. In this manner we endow the life we were unable to give."
"You outbodied your daughter, all the same-"
"Memories have their house," she said, looking around her studio. "But art doesn't propagate so well as life. Do you see? If I'd not undertaken these designs of mine, I wouldn't have wanted so badly to have a child who would. Nor been able to afford having her. In my art I try to aestheticize the nonaesthetic. Silkpurse sows. Wrap fur on parking meters. I make bearable pain I've known, for others if not always for myself. I don't believe that's often understood, and rarely appreciated." She sighed. "Critics."
"I appreciate."
"That's good. It's a holistic erosion, after a time. Retirement essentials. My final project is in progress at present," she said, patting her stomach. "I awared Ms. Glastonbury of my decision before she gifted me with this studio. She thought it a pity, but then suggested I continue casting new works using plastic, or similar material." Tanya shook her head, and smiled. "As said, I don't believe my work's intent is often understood."
"But Ms. Glastonbury understands enough at least to lend support to your work-"
"True. And as head of Dryco, that is to say the government and the world and all its works, Ms. Glastonbury as well continues to assure that fetal art has to be done. Irony redoubles when good's made from bad." Her chair creaked as she leaned back in it; her cat leapt floorways and padded to its bowl of scraps. "If you reconsider before your third month, call me. I'll guide you as I can."
"No," I told her. "I want my baby."
"I wanted mine."
The TVC played sans sound in our apartment when I came home that evening; each window's curtains were drawn against the dark without, all lights were switched on to brighten the rooms within. `John?" I called out, expecting an answer; hearing none. As each week passed he'd grown more depressed, saying little, doing less; he'd not gotten out of bed for several days, at least not while I was in the apartment, and all my attempts to comfort or concern futiled as he walled me off along with all others. For the first time since we returned I feared for what I might find, walking through my home. Cat-treading into the kitchen, I glanced through the door, turning my head away as quickly, praying to Godness I wouldn't spy him hanging there along with the garlic strands, or resting floorways with weapon at hand, afloat in his red sea.
`John?"
He wasn't there; all looked as per usual. Glasses filmed with remnants of the liquids they'd held filled the sink, the dishtowel was tossed on the table, an emptied icetray rested atop the refrigerator. The silverware drawer was open; walking over, looking in, I saw that all the knives were missing.
"Are you here, John? John?"
Mayhap he was asleep, and hadn't heard my call. I stepped into the short hall that ran between our bedroom and the living quarters, hesitating for several moments before crossing the bathroom's threshold. Reaching around the doorframe, I switched on the light; sighed as I stared inside and saw the shower door open, and visible emptiness within. His bathrobe lay near the tub, where he'd dropped it.
"John," I said again, and moved toward the bedroom. `John?" Our door was partly ajar; my hand trembled as I brushed my fingers against the wood, pushing it open. I could see my breath as I entered, and so found the wallswitch and lowered the AC. On our unmade bed's rumpled sheets rested our wedding album, a heavy blue folder housing a player and all that we'd been, preserved on disk. The dressing table was undisturbed; there was nothing in our closet that shouldn't have been there. Not even mice gave life to our room. My knees shook so that I could no longer stand; I sat on the bed, holding my head in my hands as I allowed myself recovery time. Adrenaline charged my system, pounded my heart, throbbed my head. John's copy of Knifelife lay open, facedown on the nightstand. Picking it up, I saw marked pages revealing a section entitled "What is Your Job?" Its opener read: You are the devil and you come to do devil's work.
I stood up and moved across the room to shut the door while I disrobed. As I started to close it I saw the kitchenknives embedded deeply in the wood, grouped at eyelevel in a tight circle. I gathered he'd thrown them there while sitting, or lying on the bed. Looking beneath their lengths to their wood-fixed target I gleaned what remained of the wedding picture he always kept with him. The door started to open; I fell back onto the bed, trying to shout; found that I couldn't speak, as if all my words were stolen from me.
"Iz-?" John asked as he walked in. I noticed a bloodspot at the corner of his nose; his shirtcollar was torn. His hands steamed in the room's cold air. "Iz, you're shivering. Are you AO?" I backed away from him as he approached, and I gripped my hands, trying to stop their shake. "What is it? What's troubling?"
"Where've you been?"
"A walk," he said. "As ever, it uncertained what time you'd home it. So I went walking. Nothing more."
"Why did you do that?" I asked, pointing toward the crown of knives in our door. "That's us, John. On our wedding day. Why? Why?" He sat near me, clasping his smoking hands before him in his lap.
"I mindlost, Iz," he said. "Forgive me. Something flared and I seized. I jealoused. Once I started I tossed them all. I'll repair-"
"Irreparable!" I shouted, beginning to cry. "That's us, John, that's us. Why? I came home, you'd left no note, I didn't know-"
"Please, Iz, forgive-"
"You'd exed yourself, for all I knew. Then this is what's found. This is what you think now? Is it-?"
"No..
"Then why?"
John stared at the knives in the door, blinking as if suddenly recalling that someone else had put them there. He touched my shoulder with his hand; I pulled away. "I'll not harm you, Iz."
"You harmed my picture-"
"Our picture," he said. "I jealoused. Forgive me. I miss you so-
"I'm here every night," I said. "I want to be here. I did, at least ..."
He stretched out on the bed, pressing his face into his pillow as if he might suffocate himself with it; he evidenced no sob, showed no rack, but I knew my husband's moods and knew as well his hurt was true. All
the same I froze, unable to comfort, this time as never before fearful of the manner in which he might choose to assuage his pain. A metallic perfume clung to him, the scent of copper coins. This was it, mayhap; still, however my emotions overwhelmed, my headache would not go away.
"I was unnerved, John. I expected you'd be here."
"I expected you wouldn't be," he said.
"Where were you?" I asked. "What did you do?"
"A walk, as told," he said, not turning to look at me. "Rage overwhelmed, Iz. Something had to be done. It had to be."
"What something?" He didn't answer. "I can't bear this, John, it has to end-"
"Mutual," he said, and then silenced. I sat with him until I was sure he was asleep, and of little harm to either of us; then, rising, got up and walked into the living room and made myself a place on the couch. Unplugging the TVC to assure that it wouldn't switch on by itself in the night, I lay down, propping my head against the throws, hoping that the throb would lessen enough that I too might sleep. I drifted in and out of halfsleep, eventually settling; but each time I remembered our picture nailed against the door I felt a new knife slip into my head.
The next morning I had a dream as I awoke. No sooner had I come to consciousness than most of its details raced from my memory, but I recalled being in an elevator; my blond hair lifted up from my neck as the car descended. E and John attended me as the door slid open; they held my arms with steaming hands, escorting me into a cavern. Metal filing cabinets stood as stalagmites all around. My men turned toward me and grinned; they'd lost their teeth. I noticed they wore yellow lapel buttons imprinted with the letter D. They lifted me off the floor of the cavern and threw me upward, high into its vault. As I descended I saw them waiting below me; awakening, I opened my eyes, and saw nothing.